


dared you to kiss me and ran when you tried

by gingermaggie



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - High School, Childhood Friends, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 19:08:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15669441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingermaggie/pseuds/gingermaggie
Summary: They meet for the first time when they're three years old. Somehow, this changes a lot of things.Or: Rebecca and Nathaniel grow up together.





	dared you to kiss me and ran when you tried

**Author's Note:**

  * For [callmemaib](https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmemaib/gifts).



> It wouldn’t be a gingermaggie fic if it didn’t take me seventeen years to write it! To be fair, I didn’t advertise that this was coming, so no one else (except Mairead, hi Mairead) has been waiting for it, but trust me, it’s taken a while. 
> 
> I actually don’t have any other notes on this. It’s a childhood friends AU! It’s pretty cute, I think! It’s also a little angsty at points! Go figure!
> 
> \--
> 
> Title from Mary’s Song by Taylor Swift

When they’re three, they meet for the first time. Of course Rebecca doesn’t remember it, later, but she knows all about it.

Naomi and the Plimptons both had the bright idea of trying to push their children into Ignatius Preparatory Academy, the most prestigious kindergarten in Southern California, two years early.

At three, Rebecca is already the bane of her mother’s existence, full of boisterous energy and inquisition and sweet, uncomplicated happiness that Naomi hasn’t smothered quite yet. At three, Silas hasn’t left quite yet, but it won’t be long now. His trips have already begun increasing in length. His eyes have already begun to skip over his daughter; his hands are already quick to push her away when she leaps at him for a hug. Rebecca hasn’t noticed yet. She will, far too soon.

They meet on interview day, in the waiting room, wherein Rebecca tries to introduce herself in her tiny toddler way and Nathaniel, too snobby or too shy or too Plimpton, snubs her. Not to be outdone in rudeness, Rebecca snatches the waiting room magazine he’d been meticulously studying and rips the cover off. Nathaniel’s eyes go wide, filling slightly with tears, before Nathaniel Senior grabs him, just a little too roughly, by the back of his shirt and pulls him away from Rebecca. Once inadvertently observed by his father, Nathaniel’s tears are quickly swept away by his tiny hands, and he retreats to a chair, expression eerily blank for such a small boy, and Rebecca returns at her own mother’s snapped order and pouts until their appointment time.

The school, naturally, rejects both applicants, because neither of them has gone through an appropriate preschool program and neither of them is even fully potty trained yet, and apparently there are some things Nathaniel Plimpton II’s money and Naomi Bunch’s arguing can’t overcome after all.

What does come out of the attempt is a connection between the Bunches and the Plimptons. They run in some of the same circles, anyway, get invited to some of the same parties. Naomi’s people might not be quite as elite as the Plimptons, but she’s tenacious and determined to claw her way up, and schmoozing with Nathaniel Senior isn’t a bad place to start.

Rebecca throws a tantrum every time she sees Nathaniel III for a year. And then they start talking, and the tantrums of the past might almost be preferable.

~

When they’re seven, they give real thought to kissing.

They’re at an age wherein proximity is usually all it takes to be something like friends, but not always. Rebecca has found by now that she’s not very good at relating to other children her age, but neither is Nathaniel. Rebecca is too loud and Nathaniel is too quiet and they both tend to use words that are too big to make them popular.

So sometimes, when they’re at the stupid boring grownup parties their parents drag them too, they’ll find each other, both of them having snuck away from whatever kids’ activity has been set up to the study or the kitchen or the back steps.

Today, it’s the library, packed full of books and a huge, looming desk made of dark wood and paired with a big chair covered in scratchy red fabric. Rebecca knows it’s scratchy because she climbed up into it as soon as she got in the room, delighted with the authority the desk obviously bestowed upon anyone sitting at it.

She startles when the door opens, afraid of being caught, but upon realizing it’s only Nathaniel, her face crumples into a scowl. “What are you doing here?” she demands.

“They put a movie on for the kids,” he says, in the tones of someone who would not define himself as a kid. “I had to escape.”

That’s what, after a few more minutes of conversation, gets them on the subject of kissing. Nathaniel had abandoned the screening because he found the other children far too invested in the question of whether the princess and the prince would kiss. For his part, he informed Rebecca, he thought that kissing appeared to be a terrible activity. Rebecca, as she often did when Nathaniel was around, begged to differ.

“It looks good in movies,” she points out, practical. “I mean, grownups seem to like it.”

Nathaniel isn’t convinced. “Movies aren’t real. They’re pretend. Maybe they pretend to like it for the camera.”

Rebecca shakes her head. “There has to be some parts of movies that are real,” she says impatiently. “Otherwise how would anybody think of them? It can’t all be made up, that would be dumb. So why can’t soulmates have a nice time kissing in the rain in real life?”

Nathaniel sighs. “Because soulmates aren’t real either,” he tells her, impatiently condescending. “That’s just fairytales.”

Rebecca scowls. “Nuh-uh,” she says. “I have a soulmate.”

He snorts. “Yeah? Who?”

With a huff, Rebecca crosses her arms over her chest. “I don’t know yet, dummy. You don’t know until you meet them, and then you _know_.”

“Sure,” he says, clearly not convinced, and she huffs again.

“You’re no fun.”

“Maybe not.”

“I think kissing is nice,” she says, petulant.

“I think it isn’t,” he retorts.

She huffs. “Like you’d know! You’ve never kissed anybody.”

He scoffs. “Neither have you!”

A thought strikes her. “So why don’t you just kiss me?” she asks. “Then we’ll both know, one way or another, who’s right.”

Nathaniel considers this plan. His eyes narrow as he thinks, like he wonders if it’s a trick, but finally his competitive streak and his need to be right win out, and he nods. Short. Decisive. “Fine,” he says. “Then we’ll know.”

Startled, Rebecca blinks at him. Somehow she hadn’t expected him to agree. Nathaniel _never_ agrees with her. She didn’t think it was even possible for the two of them. She recovers quickly, though, planting her hands on her hips and waiting for him to lay one on her.

He shuffles over to her, trying to hide his uncertainty, and she works not to look nervous. After what feels like an eternal game of chicken, Nathaniel finally leans in, eyes screwed shut, mouth pushed forward, to kiss her. It’s not until the last second that Rebecca loses her courage and scrambles back, out of his reach.

“I changed my mind,” she says, prim and firm. “First kisses are important. I’m gonna save my first kiss for my _soulmate_.” Her voice gets dreamy. “Everybody knows soulmates are worth waiting for.”

He shrugs. “Fine,” he says again, but he sounds a little grumpy. “Doesn’t matter to me. Good luck with your fairytales.”

She sticks her tongue out at him, and he turns away, but not fast enough to hide a tiny smile.

~

When they’re nine, they’re definitely enemies.

They fight tooth and nail all day everyday, mainly for accolades and grades but also just for the satisfaction of being right about something, whether it’s in the curriculum or not. They bicker at recess and during quiet reading time, sometimes, if Nathaniel sits too near her, and during lunch, if Rebecca isn’t too busy trying to find acceptance, futilely, at one of the tables populated by girls who don’t really seem to like her.

Mrs. Tanner is absolutely going to have a psychotic break one of these days, the way they carry on. Rebecca heard her say so on the phone once, when she snuck back to the classroom during lunch so she could read instead of deal with mean girls.

Honestly, Rebecca doesn’t see what the big deal is. Just because both her and Nathaniel’s hands shoot up instantly at almost every question, just because their hands shoot up instantly whenever the other falters or gets the wrong (or the slightly incomplete) answer, just because she threw a pencil at him once…well, anyway, it’s Mrs. Tanner’s _job_ to teach them, and especially to reward them for educational advancement. Which they’re definitely accomplishing. If nothing else, Nathaniel’s existence encourages her to work twice as hard as she might have otherwise.

And their rivalry, despite how mad Nathaniel makes her, is kind of…nice. Consistent. Reliable.

If there’s one thing Rebecca can count on, it’s that Nathaniel will have something to say about anything she says or does. That he’ll always be ready to argue with her or shoot her a condescending look or try to hide a grin at something funny she says. She can’t count on her parents, she’s learned, or her other classmates, or even her teachers, when it really counts. But this. This is definitely something real.

Rebecca still doesn’t have _friends,_ not really. But at least she has Nathaniel.

~

When they’re ten, Nathaniel misses a day of school for the first time ever.

It’s beyond disorienting for Rebecca, to settle into her seat for Geography first thing on a Tuesday morning and discover that the seat one over and two in front of her is empty. Instead of using the day to bask in unmitigated superiority over her classmates, she’s uncharacteristically off her game, forgetting to raise her hand for answers she knows, flubbing an easy math question when called upon, casting her gaze to that empty desk again and again, accidentally catching sight of Pia Cooper, in the seat in front of Nathaniel’s, instead.

Nathaniel comes back the next day, looking pale and exhausted, eyes a little unfocused when he thinks no one is paying attention. They’re both so young, but somehow Rebecca can see in him the mark of someone battleworn, forced to grow too much far too soon.

She feels something like pity for Nathaniel, and maybe that’s why she purposefully screws up a word— _seperate_ instead of _separate_ —in the practice spelling bee so he’ll win. And maybe he was probably going to win anyway, but Rebecca still spends the rest of the day basking in the glow of having done something kind, of being a good person.

By the next week, Nathaniel is back to normal, stony and confident and guarded, and Rebecca all but forgets that haunted look in his eyes, happy to once again fight all-out.

~

When they’re thirteen, Rebecca realizes, for the first time, that maybe her brain really isn’t quite right.

It’s a realization a long time coming, shoved down amidst the cruelty of middle school taunts and racing hearts and nights lying awake trying to settle her mind. It’s squeezed deep into her heart, covered up by her mother’s cutting remarks and her academic excellence and the half-hearted friendships she claimed with kids who were honestly acquaintances at best.

Underneath all her denial, she knows people are calling her crazy, have been for a while, and it’s getting harder and harder not to believe them.

It all comes to a head, ridiculously, during an argument with Nathaniel, as they’re working on a partners worksheet out in the hallway, because Ms. George lets them spread out for partner worksheets. It’s about something as stupid as ever, a hill nobody really wants to die on, a bicker for the sake of bickering—their favorite kind, honestly. But she’s getting more worked up than usual, some awful combination of hormones and hunger and exhaustion and frustration with stupid perfect Plimpton and she’s talking louder than she should and she can feel her eyes getting wide and when Nathaniel scoffs at her it’s like a dam breaking in her stupid broken brain.

“Damn,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re just—”

“Crazy?” she cuts him off, frenzied. “Is that what you were gonna say? Rebecca Bunch is certifiable? Psycho? Nuts? Trust me, I’ve heard it all a million times. You’re not original. I know exactly how fucked up I am, okay?”

There’s a long moment in which he does nothing but stare at her, make her feel entirely too _observed._

“Obnoxious,” he says finally. “I was gonna say you’re just so obnoxious.”

It takes entirely too long for that word to make its way into her ears, through her brain, down to her heart where it curls up and warms her spirit.

 _Obnoxious,_ she thinks, surprised to find it doesn’t ping as the insult she supposes he meant it as. There’s something about being obnoxious that’s bright, and spirited, and purposeful, that appeals to her. Not insane. Not out of control. Just plain old theater-kid obnoxious.

She can work with that.

“Well,” she says, surprised to find a giggle working its way out of her throat. “You’re a prick.”

To her surprise, Nathaniel’s face breaks out into a full-fledged grin. “Whatever, Bunch,” he says. “Let’s finish this stupid worksheet.”

Maybe that conversation shifts something in their dynamic, or maybe things were always going to be this way, but the next week, Rebecca has a panic attack, the first one she’s ever had _in class_ , and Nathaniel is the only other student who doesn’t stop and stare or snicker or jeer.

Instead, he shoves Daniel Martinez out of the way so he can crouch by her chair, hand on her arm.

“Hey,” he says. “Let’s take a deep breath. Okay? You can close your eyes, just focus on this.”

She sucks in as much air as she can manage and almost chokes on it.

Everybody’s looking at her. She’s acting like a freak, and everybody can see, and Nathaniel is touching her very carefully and everybody can see that too. Everybody is witness to Nathaniel talking her through calming techniques, while freaking Mr. Ellison just stares along with the rest of them instead of stepping in or calling the nurse or _anything_.

Everybody can hear when Andy Bida, the lead of half the school’s plays and the boy Rebecca had a crush on for all of sixth grade, stage whispers, “What do you think it is today, the daddy issues or the bulimia? My money’s on daddy issues.”

Fresh tears spring to Rebecca’s eyes, but before she even has a chance to blink them away Nathaniel snaps, “Nobody asked you, dipshit.”

The room rocks with the sudden silence, and then Maria Tran giggles and the spell is broken. Well, for the other students, at least. Rebecca feels like she must be caught in a dreamland, because…Nathaniel is defending her? She’s so startled it might have honestly stopped her panic attack. She takes another steadying breath, recovering.

Nathaniel gets lunch detention for what Mr. Ellison, the useless cretin, calls his “foul language.” He shoots Rebecca such a shy, self-deprecating grin as he heads for the door that her heart lurches.

When he slides into the seat three over from her in pre-Algebra that afternoon, she tosses a crumpled-up note at him. It bounces off the edge of his chair, but to her relief he picks it up and smooths it against his desk, his expression blank as he reads her loopy handwriting.

_Thanks, Plimpton. Really._

The very, very tips of his ears turn red. He sneaks a glance at her, nods ever so subtly.

And that’s when she and Nathaniel become best friends as well as rivals.

~

When they’re fifteen, Rebecca notices that Nathaniel has a Thing with food.

Since they started high school, Nathaniel has become popular in ways and at a level that Rebecca…hasn’t. They’re both, on the basest level, huge nerds who put way too much pressure on themselves to succeed academically, but Nathaniel is also _athletic_ , and that opens him up to a lot of male bonding and admiration from male-attracted students. He does water polo in the fall and runs track in the spring, and he’s annoyingly good at both. Rebecca, meanwhile, eschewed all kinds of traditional physical activity for theater and a disastrously short-lived stint in marching band.

The extreme jump in extracurricular activities in their post-middle school world had scared Rebecca at first, to be honest. It felt, painfully, like the natural end of their friendship, or at least the level of friendship they’d found in those last days of junior high. She’d been relieved when Nathaniel had signed up for Mock Trial and Model UN with her, and she’d been delighted to find those weren’t the only times he acknowledged her. They were still, somehow, best friends, hanging out after school and on weekends and at lunch. Sometimes they’d hang out with his sports friends, and she’d feel kind of like a tagalong, but Nathaniel was well-liked enough that he was allowed a mostly snide-comment-free plus-one, and Rebecca loved going to house parties and sports games and diner runs that she never would have dreamed possible for her as a kid. Still, stuff like that was only part of the time. Nathaniel and Rebecca were still Nathaniel and Rebecca, and they still functioned best one-on-one.

Like at lunch. Usually at least three lunches a week were just them, like this, him with a home-packed salad that’s basically just lettuce and her with a cafeteria-purchased hamburger slathered with cheese and topped with somewhat suspicious bacon.

“Want a bite?” she asks him, waving the half-eaten monstrosity in front of him, mouth still full of food.

He bumps her arm away with his shoulder. “I can feel my arteries clogging just looking at that thing,” he says, wrinkling his nose. “You couldn’t pay me enough.”

“Ugh, you and Naomi should hang out more,” she says. “You sound eerily alike. Also, for the record, _you couldn’t pay me enough_ sounds pretty trite coming from a rich asshole like yourself,” she adds. “You don’t need money, so you can afford to be a financially-based dare prude.”

“Sorry for caring about what kind of fuel I put into my body,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Rich or not, I’m not going to make captain eating crap all the time,” he adds, and somehow he manages not to make it sound like a slam against her. She’d love if her mother could somehow pick up _that_ talent.

But then he drops his napkin onto his barely-touched pile of lettuce and Rebecca feels suddenly, utterly uneasy. Her heart lurches as the action pulls up memories of too many half-finished lunches and rejected snacks she’s tried to share over the last few months. “Hey, Plimpton, seriously…we should talk about this. You need to eat.”

“Rebecca, I don’t want to do this,” he says, tone more dismissive than it has been towards her in recent memory. So he knows she’s right. This is a _thing_. A real one.

Hurt and disappointment swell up her heart. “Well, I don’t care,” she snaps. “We’re talking about it. You’re scaring me, okay? You’re fifteen years old and you work out twice a day, you’re skipping meals, you barely eat the food you do bring—” She breaks off when she realizes she’s tearing up. Even now she hates crying in front of Nathaniel. Perfect Plimptons don’t cry. Neither should she.

When she swipes at her eyes and clears away some of the fog, she realizes Nathaniel’s expression has changed. He looks stricken. “I…didn’t know you were worried about me,” he says, and something in his voice makes her wonder if there’s more he’s not saying.

“Will you please—” she chokes back a hiccup. “Will you please just—talk to the guidance counselor about this?”

He cuts his eyes away. “Rebecca—” he says.

“It doesn’t have to be a big deal. I’m not saying it’s a big deal. Just bring it up. Start a conversation about it. As a favor to me. _Please,_ Nathaniel,” she whispers, and he sighs.

“Okay,” he says.

“Promise?”

“Sure, promise.”

“And eat this fry to seal the deal,” she adds, holding her carton out to him.

She’s expecting him to fight back or at least grumble, but he reaches out without complaint, grabs three fries, even, and pops them in his mouth.

Relieved, Rebecca takes a sip of her soda, finding it difficult to meet his eyes when his gaze is suddenly so soft.

~

When they’re sixteen, Nathaniel decides he doesn’t believe in marriage.

“It’s stupid,” he says, tie loose around his neck. They’re sitting on the low rock wall that surrounds the quad, late in the afternoon, after the Model UN meeting. He’s relaxed in a way that he never is unless he’s very tired, and unless it’s just the two of them. “Shackled to one person for eternity? How boring.”

Nathaniel has been a notorious playboy for almost a year now, or at least as much of a playboy as a fifteen slash sixteen year old can be. Mostly he makes out with a new girl every weekend, plus sometimes a few more during the school week, and he has definitely had sex.

Meanwhile, Rebecca has had one boyfriend, Josh Chan, at camp this past summer, and they got _almost_ all the way to third base before he dumped her. When she showed Nathaniel his picture, he’d said Josh looked like a flip flop and that she deserved better than him. She didn’t really agree with him on either count, but it still made her laugh through the post-heartbreak tears.

“Why would anyone want to do the same thing every day forever?” Nathaniel continues, now. “The _pursuit_ is the fun part, everybody knows that. It’s basic biology.”

Anyone can see that Nathaniel clearly prioritizes variety in the female of the species, and so most people would probably take his words at face value. But Rebecca is his best friend, and she knows this new stance is less about him and his preferences and more about his parents.

“You sound like a twat,” she tells him, because again, she’s his best friend.

He rolls his eyes and doesn’t even crack a smile, which is a bad sign. He’s really doubling down on this one.

Rebecca doesn’t think his parents are actually going to get a divorce, but she thinks they probably should. She doesn’t know all the details of Nathaniel’s home life, but she knows enough that she definitely hates Nathaniel Senior. Maybe even more than she hates the Westchester Sperm Machine. Maybe her dad abandoned her, exacerbated her genetic predisposition for anxiety and depression, and sparked a lifetime of insecurity, but at least she doesn’t have to face his disinterest and disapproval day in and day out like Nathaniel does. She thinks all that pressure might be slowly killing him, and that’s kind of killing her.

She wants to tell him that just because his parents don’t seem to love each other, don’t seem to see him as anything other than a prop or a weapon or a nuisance, that doesn’t mean all marriages are shams. Just because she can’t really think of any positive examples of marriage in their lives, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

They have to exist.

But Rebecca’s always been the hopeless romantic between the two of them, and even with all their arguing and debating she’s never been able to convince him to change his mind.

~

When they’re seventeen, Nathaniel kisses her for the first time. She doesn’t see it coming.

They’re in her room, music blaring from her stereo because she’s complaining about her mom and the last thing she needs is Naomi eavesdropping on her venting session.

“And she’s _definitely_ pissed about the haircut,” she continues, drawing swirling patterns on her sneaker with a ballpoint pen. “Which is so dumb, because it looks so much better, there’s no way she can deny that, she’s just pissed because it wasn’t her idea.”

“Mmhm,” Nathaniel says, flipping a page in his textbook. Rebecca knows he’s only half listening, but she also knows he is paying some amount of attention. This is how venting sessions go. She rants, he works on something else. She gets it out of her system, he doesn’t have to figure out complicated affirmations, but he can still validate that she’s not letting her emotions get too out of control. The process works for them. They’re awesome best friends.

“But ever since I got the braces off, I feel like I finally have a chance to, like— _look good_ ,” she says. “Not that, like—it’s not like it’s some huge change, but it’s nice to feel like I’m—distancing myself. From being a little kid, or whatever.”

Nathaniel glances up. “No, that makes sense,” he says, ever reasonable. “You’re seventeen. You’re old enough to get a haircut if you want without a permission slip.”

“ _Thank_ you,” Rebecca says. “And speaking of being old enough, she started talking about colleges again, and majors, and it’s all just—ugh. I wish she would at least _pretend_ it’s a discussion, instead of just laying down the law from on high. Like, I know she’d never go for me skipping college to go to New York, or even just majoring in theater, but I can never even bring it up anymore or she goes ballistic.”

That, for some reason, makes Nathaniel’s textbook click shut. “She’s an idiot,” he says, looking directly into her eyes.

Rebecca snorts. “Yeah, not really.”

He shrugs. “I just mean…you don’t have to listen to her. You don’t have to follow her exact life plan.” Before she can point out the hypocrisy of such a claim from Perfect Plimpton Junior, he presses on. “You’re…incredible, Rebecca,” he says, and she looks away in the hopes that he won’t see her flush at that. “You’re going to do something amazing. I…I can tell.”

It’s an absurdly sentimental statement, coming from Nathaniel, and that just makes it ring falser for Rebecca. Makes it easier, somehow, to reject the idea. He’s probably just trying to live vicariously through her, since he’ll never go against his own dad.

“She’s right, though. It’s stupid,” she says. “It’s just a stupid dream, and it’s ridiculous for me to even pretend it’s ever going to happen. I’m going to go to law school and be a lawyer, and that’s—fine. I’ll like it, I’m sure. Why risk it on an impossible dream, right?”

Nathaniel huffs in frustration. “Because,” he begins, clearly searching for the perfect rebuttal. “Because… _because._ ” he says finally, and she pokes his nose, teasing.

“Nathaniel Plimpton III, future hotshot lawyer, coming in with a clutch argument, huh?” she says.

“Shut up,” he retorts, which isn’t much of an improvement. But he presses on. “Because…if you don’t try, then what’s the point of _wanting?_ ”

And Rebecca’s laugh catches in her throat at the way his voice curls around that word, _wanting_ , the way his eyes slide across hers, hesitant, dropping to her lips for an infinitesimal eternity; the way he shifts, awkward in a way Nathaniel never is, and his hand skims across her knee.

The air between them is charged and almost sweet with sudden anticipation, and Rebecca wets her lips, anxious. Nathaniel’s eyes darken, and his lips part like he’s going to say something.

He doesn’t. Instead his hand comes up to cup her cheek, almost clumsy, uncertain, thumb sliding across her messy, short hair. He leans in slow, too slow, giving her all kinds of time to pull away, to pretend it never happened.

She’s the one to close the distance.

The kiss is soft and sweet for a long moment, and then before she realizes it Rebecca’s hands are screwed up in the front of Nathaniel’s button down, and his are sliding up under her blouse, against her skin, pulling her closer, closer, closer, and his mouth is hot on her neck and her collarbone and behind her ear, and then her hands are on his neck and he’s tugging at her earlobe with his teeth before returning his attention to her lips.

And holy _shit._

Nathaniel kisses her.

~

When they’re seventeen, Nathaniel kisses her many, many times.

Before school. After school. In classrooms and bedrooms and parks. At Meghan Brady’s house parties on weekends and behind the bleachers during their free fifth period and when her mother leaves them alone in the basement after making a snide comment about the number of snacks Rebecca has procured for the afternoon.

They agree that it’s not about romance. It’s physical. They’re good at the physical. They’re best friends with benefits.

“ _Very good_ benefits,” Rebecca says, grinning and wiggling her eyebrows.

When she thinks she sees something like longing in Nathaniel’s eyes, she chalks it up to hormones. She can hear him clear as day in her memories, denouncing monogamy, celebrating the chase, belittling romance. She knows what she agreed to, that first day, when they’d finally come up for air.

She knows this arrangement has an expiration looming in the future. Just because he’s okay with one girl for now doesn’t mean he will be forever. She doesn’t expect that from him. She knows better than to get attached to someone who isn’t attached to her. The last thing she wants is another Josh Chan situation.

Especially not with Nathaniel. Not with her best friend. And if she sees something more than friendly in his eyes sometimes, something almost sad whenever she affirms their non-romance, something painfully tender in his fingers tangled in hers, every now and then, when he walks her to her car? She knows it’s her eternally-overactive imagination. Definitely not wishful thinking, and _definitely_ not the truth.

Imagination.

~

When they’re eighteen, they get in the biggest fight they’ve ever had.

What started it, Rebecca couldn’t say. Probably her. Probably something stupid. But then there’s yelling. There’s stony silence. There are low blows. There are snide comments, memories thrown in faces, fifteen years of weaponry unleashed in a flurry of tears and lies and _I-don’t-care_ s. 

Rebecca leaves his house confused as to what even caused the fight. What even happened. She’d come over tonight thinking about how much she cared about Nathaniel, how much she was going to miss him when summer ended. Now she’d be happy never to see him again.

 _Good riddance, asshole,_ she thinks.

 _You ruined everything,_ she thinks, but she pushes that thought away.

He leaves for Stanford. She leaves for Harvard. Neither says goodbye.

~

When they’re twenty, Nathaniel’s father dies.

It’s a heart attack, she hears. Completely out of the blue. Devastating, she hears. A real shock. The family is miserable. The community will miss him, she hears. The shareholders send their condolences. A real blow to the legal community. His son is in mourning, she hears, but putting on a brave face.

She thinks some of those things are probably true.

She thinks about skipping the funeral, even though it’s over spring break and her mother is going anyway and she’s always liked Mrs. Plimpton well enough on her own. She hasn’t seen Nathaniel since eighteen, and she still doesn’t feel ready.

But he was her best friend, once upon a time, and his father is dead. She should go. She probably won’t even talk to him. But she should go.

The ceremony itself is what you’d expect for a powerful man with little love left behind postmortem. It’s very classy and very sterile and riddled with transparent lies and generic platitudes and if funerals are for the living, Rebecca thinks, maybe we should stop sucking up to dead assholes like Nathaniel Plimpton II. But she’s not allowed to say things like that. It’s not her dead asshole dad.

Back at the Plimpton’s for the reception, she finds Nathaniel so easily it aches, hiding over behind the pool shed, eyes glassy and unfocused, staring at nothing. Her beautiful, broken best friend.

“Hey,” she says, before she really thinks it through. She didn’t mean to talk to him. She didn’t even mean to come over here. Her feet just knew. Or her heart.

But Nathaniel doesn’t respond, doesn’t even look at her, and hurt and embarrassment fester quickly into irritation and residual anger, despite the circumstances. She shakes her head. “Never mind. I don’t know why I even…” She trails off. Shakes her head again. Turns to leave. Takes a step forward, even.

“Is it fucked up,” comes his voice from behind her, freezing her, “that the thing I keep thinking is, _now I will never prove to him I’m good enough?_ Not, _I can’t believe he’s gone._ Not, _I loved him, I’m gonna miss him so much._ Just… _that bastard, screwing me over again._ ”

She turns slowly, just in time to see him reach up to his neck, tentatively, pull his tie looser. The way he’s only ever done alone with her. She watches his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows, too hard, and she’s struck with a flash of memory, her mouth on that spot, tugging his tie down herself as his hands curled around the hem of her slightly-too-short uniform skirt, as he breathed her name.

“What did he ever do to deserve more than that?” she asks, and pretends not to see the tear that slips out of his right eye and shatters on his too-polished right shoe.

Instead, she stretches her arms out, unabashed and unjudgmental, and feels a crash of relief when he folds into the hug immediately, burying his face in her shoulder and breathing like he’s been missing air as long as she has. Since eighteen.

She starts counting the seconds they stand like that, loses count and interest after 243. It’s abrupt when he pulls back, steps back, swipes a hand over his eyes and clears his throat.

“Thanks,” he says, and he sounds distant. Guarded. Plimpton. “See you around, Bunch.”

She can’t find her voice until he’s already retreated back into the throng of rent-a-mourners. So she tells her mother she’s leaving, and she goes.

She thinks about calling him, a month later. Or texting. Instagram. Smoke signal. Anything. She doesn’t.

~

When they’re twenty-three, they meet again.

To the best of Rebecca’s knowledge, her and Nathaniel’s lives splintered in separate directions. She hasn’t heard anything about him in a while, but last she knew he was going to law school, same as her, same as they’d both always planned, but he was staying in California and she was staying as far away from California as she could manage, away from Naomi, swapping Harvard out for Yale and trying to convince herself that she was happy, or that she was about to be, if she just pushed on a little further. She was gonna be a lawyer, and a kickass one at that, and her mother would finally be really truly proud of her, and that was that.

But in the end, Rebecca had quit law school a semester in, moved to New York on a whim to try to make it on Broadway, because every time she closed her eyes she heard a voice in the back of her mind saying _if you don’t try, then what’s the point of wanting?_

She’s no musical star, has had to face the reality of being somewhat rhythmically and vocally challenged, but it turns out she’s a knockout at comedy monologues, and she just—she fucking loves it, loves becoming someone else for a while, loves her supporting role in a warm, heartfelt off-Broadway production, loves her shitty apartment and her weird roommate Heather, who’s also from California and who looks at Rebecca like she’s crazy but in a good way, somehow. She’s doing well. She’s going to a therapist weekly and calling her mother monthly and living at least some of her dreams and she’s really, truly, happy. Mostly. Usually.

“Don’t look now,” Heather says, as they sip rosé at their fancy bar, the one they go to for special occasions, not their usual divey place near their apartment. “But there’s a dude staring at you.”

Some determined and resilient piece of Rebecca’s heart flips eagerly at the announcement. Call her cheesy, but despite everything she’s still hoping she’s going to meet her soulmate someday. And magic feels possible tonight, at the end of her first full week in a major role in a real play, in New York, following her dreams.

“Give me the details,” she says. “Where is he, how long has he been staring, what does he look like, should I go talk to him?”

Heather leans her chin into her palm, peers intently over Rebecca’s shoulder, apparently unapologetically staring at the guy. “Hm,” she says. “Table by the wall. Artfully mussed blond hair. Nice suit. Straight nose. Fancy looking watch. Pretending to stare at his phone now. He’s got kind of a—” she gestures vaguely. “ _Paul Bratter, rising young attorney_ look about him. Stuffed shirt, but definitely still sexy.”

Something nervous starts tickling its way through Rebecca’s stomach, some terrible sixth sense working faster than logic to warn her of what’s about to happen.

“Wow, now he’s looking again,” Heather says. “You should either have his babies or get a restraining order.”

Rebecca swallows hard, gathers her courage, and turns to look at her alleged admirer, point blank.

“Oh, fuck,” she says, grateful that the guy is now poring studiously over his menu. She turns away before he looks up again.

Heather furrows her brow. “What?” she asks, in that nosy-but-somehow-still-fashionably-disinterested way she has.

“That’s my—uh—my…” Rebecca realizes quite suddenly that she doesn’t really have a single word to describe who Nathaniel is to her. He’s not her ex. Not really. And he’s not her best friend. Not anymore. Not her classmate, not her rival, not her boyfriend, not her soulmate. Just. Some guy she used to know. “Nathaniel,” she says, but she’s not even really talking to Heather anymore. Just testing out the taste of those syllables on her tongue, when she’s swallowed them down more times than she can count in the last three years.

She’s missed him so damn much.

It takes her a moment to stop trembling, to work up the courage. She’s going to go over there. She’s going to talk to him. She’s going to—

Heather’s eyes go wide across the table, and Rebecca realizes what’s happening a second too late, as she’s already getting to her feet. She turns to see him, right in front of her. Nathaniel. Older and sharper and somehow in an even nicer suit but still Nathaniel.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” she replies, soft.

“I, uh. I wasn’t sure if it was you. I thought it was.”

“It, um. Was.”

“Okaaaaaay,” Heather cuts in, and Rebecca is just able to stop herself from jumping in surprise at the reminder of her presence. “I’m feeling…uh…really tired. Yeah, super sleepy. Yaaaawn.” She stretches out her arms and gapes her mouth wide in a truly terrible approximation of a yawn. “So I’m gonna get an Uber and—get out of all…this.” She waves her hands to encompass Rebecca, Nathaniel, and the three feet of space between them. “Bye,” she adds, and she’s gone.

Nathaniel blinks, and Rebecca feels her mouth pulling into a smile. “That’s my roommate,” she says, feeling the need to explain. “Heather. She’s, um. Not subtle. Or I guess we aren’t. Subtle, I mean.”

She regrets the words as soon as they leave her mouth. _Too much_ , her brain screams. _Too much, Bunch!_

“We aren’t?” Nathaniel asks, and her cheeks flood with heat. He grins, like that fact is a victory. “No,” he says. “No, I guess we aren’t. Any chance you want to get out of here, too?” he asks.

She tries not to let her blush deepen. She probes down deep in her heart, tries to decide how broken it still is because of this boy in front of her, and decides the pain is worth it if she gets even one night—even one night of just talking, catching up, longing—with Nathaniel Plimpton III.

“I do, actually,” she says, and his smile is the reward she didn’t know she was craving.

They go back to his apartment and it’s probably a terrible idea. He pulls a bottle of whiskey out from somewhere and they pass it back and forth, swigging from it, like stupid teenagers, on opposite ends of the couch.

Very opposite ends of the couch.

And they talk. For hours they talk about where life has taken them and where it hasn’t, about their schooling and their careers and how he ended up in New York (breaking away from his father's legacy) and how she's taking control of her life (therapy and distance from Naomi and chasing her own dreams instead of what happy looks like to other people). All the empty spaces in their knowledge of each other. They avoid talking about the empty spaces in the stories where their friendship should have been.

But it’s so _nice_. It feels so natural and so peaceful and so obvious. She’s missed him so fucking much. She’s warm from the alcohol and she sincerely can’t remember what they fought about at eighteen and she hasn’t remembered for years. Each sip of whiskey pulls them closer together until they’re on the same cushion, legs almost touching but not quite there.

She knows this is a terrible idea. And she’s been doing so much better, has been so much less destructive lately. She’s finally on the brink of a breakthrough. But this is _Nathaniel_. She’s never been able to help herself with him.

His eyes close as she leans in. He’s stiff as a board, statuesque, but he bends obediently when she tugs the front of his shirt, brings his face low enough for her to reach. His mouth close enough for her to press hers against it.

That’s all that happens for a long moment. A soft, gentle kiss between friends. Rebecca’s heart is racing. Her head is spinning. She can smell Nathaniel, and somehow he smells like home, after all these years. Familiar. Comforting. She tries to work up the courage to pull him closer. For a better kiss. For something more. For _very good_ benefits. Maybe this time she can get him out of her system, and move on.

“Do you ever think about wanting?” he whispers against her lips.

He might as well have poured a bucket of cold water over her. She pulls back, quick, but he doesn’t open his eyes.

“I wanted you,” he adds, voice still low. “In high school. I don’t think I realized how much.”

“I don’t…” she begins, but she can’t find her voice past that point.

“I think I didn’t want to admit it to myself,” he continues, unfazed. “Because of how I’d been raised. To see love as something childish. Weak. Something for fairytales. But—” He sighs. He opens his eyes, his gaze hazy as he looks at her. “In retrospect, I’m pretty sure I was in love with you.”

He reaches out a hand, tentative, to swipe a thumb across her cheek. Now her eyes fall closed, but she pries them back open.

“Nathaniel,” she says, voice cracking in her panic. “Nathaniel, stop. I can’t do this again. I—I’m so tired of losing the people I care about. I can’t—let you back in again, because you’re going to leave, everyone _always_ leaves me—” Her hand is flat against his chest, but she can’t quite bring herself to push him away.

He shakes his head, and the way he looks into her eyes makes her feel so _observed_. “I’m done leaving, Rebecca. I’m done walking away from what I really want. Are you?”

She feels the slide of his thumb against her hip. Gentle. Steady. Warm. Just like him, as unlikely as she would have found that at thirteen. At ten. At nine. At seven. At three.

Nathaniel Plimpton. Her childhood best friend. The love of her fucking life, probably.

She kisses him.

~

When they’re twenty-three, they fall in love again, and this time, they’re ready.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The feeling I kept getting as I wrote this fic was the sense that a Rebecca and Nathaniel who grew up together would be so incredibly functional compared to their show counterparts. Not because of lack of abandonment issues, anxiety, depression, parental pressure and neglect, disordered eating, etc., but because of the compatibility between them and the instant support system they find in each other. So in this universe Nathaniel helps Rebecca through panic attacks at thirteen and Rebecca helps Nathaniel avoid a full on anorexic outbreak at fifteen and having each other even in the past helps each follow their dreams post breakup.
> 
> Also apparently the power of them making out at seventeen literally killed Nathaniel Senior #goals.
> 
> Also also I looked up the sports schedules for high schools in Southern California for this fic you’re welcome I care about them #details but only when it’s convenient for me. I also looked up examples of words a fifth-grade spelling bee would have. Everything else I apparently decided I knew enough about on my own. You can be the judge of whether that’s true. 
> 
> Come hang out on tumblr! I’m [romansuzume](http://romansuzume.tumblr.com) (prev. thebluestgansey)!


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